Month: October 2015

The University of Pavia in northern Italy is one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1361. It has a distinguished history of experimental scientific research: Alessandro Volta, the pioneer of electrochemistry, was professor there for forty years beginning in 1779. While Volta was working on his voltaic pile – the first electric battery … Continue reading Saliva and crow’s vomit

The remarkable headline above graced the pages of the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in April 1849. In case you’re wondering, the two injuries are not related: the author just thought he’d put his two most spectacular cases in the same article. Dr W.S.W Ruschenberger, surgeon to the US Navy, writes: While recently on … Continue reading Glass half-empty

In 1837 a Canadian teenager tripped over while walking back to his parents’ house. The accident did not hurt much, but it made him strangely famous: journals on both sides of the Atlantic reported the case with astonishment, and the story was reproduced in several anthologies of medical curiosities. And it really is extraordinary. The … Continue reading A case for Dr Coffin

Earlier this week I spent a day in an operating theatre watching heart surgery. It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life: six hours standing by as exceptionally brave and skilful people did things which would have been thought impossible fifty years ago. Several medics warned me that I might faint: “Lots … Continue reading The electric scalpel

Until the early twentieth century, medicine had little to say about heart disease. Although the best specialists of the nineteenth century became remarkably adept at distinguishing between different types of congenital defects using little more than the stethoscope and physical symptoms, they remained almost clueless about acquired conditions – and, in particular, what caused them. … Continue reading An ‘unnatural propensity’ and its perils

The medical experiments of earlier centuries often look odd to the modern eye. So odd, in fact, that it’s easy to dismiss them as stupid or gratuitously cruel. But we need to remember just how little was known two hundred years ago: things which seem obvious today were not yet even suspected. One example can … Continue reading Don’t try this at home

A post last week referred to Andrew Duncan, founder of the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries, the first regular medical journal published in the United Kingdom. In 1810 he wrote a paper for a publication slightly less well known for its original medical research, the Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural Society. His subject? Lettuce. Opium, or … Continue reading Lettuce, a Class A drug

Those who think that morbid obesity is a uniquely modern phenomenon should read William Wadd’s ‘Comments on Corpulency’, published over several issues of the London Medical Gazette in 1828. In a long essay he considered dozens of cases he had encountered, many of whom would be today under the care of a bariatric surgeon. Here’s … Continue reading Aleing all day, and oiling all night

A remarkable recovery from a goring by a bull was recorded in 1774 in the pages of the Medical and Philosophical Commentaries. Published in Edinburgh, this was the first regular medical journal to be published in the British Isles and had been founded the previous year by the physician Andrew Duncan (the elder). Dr Robert Maclagan … Continue reading Brained by a bull

An angry Dr Tuson from Fitzrovia writes to the London Medical Journal in 1831. He begins with an apology: Though I may incur the displeasure of many of the female part of the community in investigating a subject, the province of which they may consider peculiarly their own, yet on perusing my observations they will perceive that … Continue reading Stay of execution?